From the author of

Go for Humor

With major athletes, five minutes is a big deal. If you’ve only got
five minutes, you’ve got to force an emotional response from your subjects
that in turn will translate into an emotional response from your viewer (see
Figure 4). Humor is one of the biggest things you’ve got in your bag of
tricks—if you can introduce a little humor into your photo, so many things
can go to hell in a handbasket, and you still get a great picture. In public,
these guys have got their game faces on, so when you capture them laughing, it
makes them more human to the reader.